Insights Archives

April 5-11, 2025 is Week of the Young Child. We’re taking the opportunity to look at trends among our youngest Minnesotans, and ask the question “How are our littlest residents doing?”

We've divided the trends into two parts. First, we'll look at the demographics, and then at the overall well-being of our state's young children.

Executive orders to suppress data from federal sites is a serious threat to open, accessible, reliable information that informs health care, planning, research, funding decisions, and political representation. Minnesota Compass and Wilder Research staff share what this means for all of us, why the data are important, and what we can do to make sure more public data are not lost.

How are Minnesota organizations and businesses incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives into hiring, retention, and leadership development, and what are the outcomes? Minnesota Compass and Wilder Research interviewed HR professionals in government, business, and nonprofits to better understand the challenges organizations face in implementing DEI initiatives and the effectiveness of their strategies. 

Minnesota Compass is updating its public safety key measures to better reflect the community safety issues that matter most to Minnesotans’ quality of life. In this article, researcher Allison Liuzzi takes a deeper look at two new measures – adult feelings of safety and crime rates – to show how objective, official crime statistics align with Minnesotans’ feelings of safety in their communities.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful tool for how we gather, interpret, and use data. For Minnesota Compass users—whether you are involved in grant writing, strategic planning, community organizing, or advocacy—integrating AI presents both opportunities and challenges. In Minnesota Compass’s latest Insights article, Justin Hollis provides a guide to understanding common AI tools and how to use AI when conducting data research.

Minnesota Compass looked at Minnesota voter turnout data from the 2000s and came up with 9 voter trends to watch for the coming 2024 presidential election.

In part three of our data disaggregation series, Research Associate Anne Li shares what she has learned about Latino and Hispanic Minnesotans. "Experiences, strengths, challenges, and needs vary by community, which is why disaggregating populations beyond census-level race groups is so important," she writes.

For the first time in over two decades, Minnesota will receive more accurate racial and ethnic population data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey. Recent updates to federal data collection guidelines will significantly improve our understanding of communities across Minnesota.

How did leaders come to their positions? It’s one of the most common questions Minnesota Compass receives about data in our Who Leads in MN? section. So we’ve been collecting information to learn more about pathways into leadership. Our findings point to some noticeable differences in how leaders came into their positions across Minnesota’s business, government, and nonprofit sectors.